Elizabeth Smart will speak about her abduction and forgiveness March 8 in Fort Wayne.It looks like a science classroom with electric sockets hanging from the ceiling, computer stations set up at every table, uncomfortable lab stools.
But all those tools are left unused (well, except for those sorry excuses for chairs) as students pore over the problem at hand. It’s a solitary version of Battleship, which ends up looking a little like a Sudoku game.
There’s a 10-by-10 grid, and students have a variety of ships to place on the game board. They stay within set parameters – this row can have only four spaces blocked off, that column can have only one, etc.
It’s a puzzle, a strategy game – something folks do for fun at breakfast or on a long car ride. And these students are getting college credit for it.
Puzzles, Strategy Games and Scientific Problem Solving is one of a handful of quirky and unusual courses offered by local universities and colleges that provide credit toward graduation.
Local colleges are certainly not alone in these kinds of offerings. The Joy of Garbage is offered at Santa Clara University in California. Columbia College in Chicago offers Zombies in Popular Media. Students at Kent State University in Ohio can take Geography of Wine.
That’s not to call such classes common, however. Faculty members are traditionally reluctant to change, says IPFW physics professor Dave Malone, who teaches the puzzles and game class. This makes courses like his pretty unusual.
The courses aren’t always around for a long time; however, when they are, they tend to be popular among students.
“All the other courses I teach are pretty much required courses for various majors,” Malone says. “It’s nice to have a course where the students aren’t in there under such strong duress.
“I think probably most faculty who would do a course like this, there’s some direct connection to their research or to some interest that they have, and this gives them a chance to explore it further and get reaction from students about ideas and approaches.”
His puzzles and game course is what’s called an Area VI general education class. These kind of general education courses ensure well-rounded students by getting them to take classes that might not necessarily fit in their major, officials say.
“In one sense, I think (students) come in, and their expectations are reasonable because they are going to engage into solving puzzles and playing games,” Malone says.
“However, what they really don’t expect is the level of challenge in the course. I am a pretty demanding instructor, and the reasoning that they have to go through (to complete the puzzles) and the metacognition (thinking about thinking) – the effort to explain what they are doing and why they are trying that – is a significant challenge.
“It’s a common experience for me to go to graduation and have students who have been in puzzles say that was the toughest course they have at IPFW. I’m actually old enough and ornery enough to be perfectly happy with that.”
Senior Andy Senter took the class for two reasons: he plays strategy games anyway, he says, and he needed an upper-level class.
“For the most part, it’s what I’d hoped,” says Senter, 30. “I think it’s more fun than difficult.”
How to get promoted
When students see the title of the course, Entrepreneurial Thinking, they assume it is a business class, one that will teach them how to be an entrepreneur. That’s not it at all.
“I think one of the reactions is, ‘What the hell am I doing here? I thought I was going to learn how to start a business,’ ” says Jim Falkiner, who teaches the course at Manchester College in North Manchester.
Instead, Falkiner’s course teaches students how to problem-solve in a business setting and how to display those solutions to the person in charge.
When the course started four years ago, it was all business students; today, the course is what Falkiner envisioned when he started teaching it – psychology students seated next to art students seated next to physics students.
The skills taught are applicable in any discipline, and Falkiner has proof that they work.
He recently e-mailed a student to congratulate him on a promotion directly related to something he learned in Entrepreneurial Thinking.
“A supervisor will have an employee say, ‘That process doesn’t work,’ ” he says. “ ‘What should we do?’ The most common answer is ‘I don’t know. You’re the boss. Fix it.’ ”
With Falkiner’s method, “When asked what to do, they say, ‘I’m glad you mentioned that,’ ” he says.
The process involves coming up with a solution to fix the problem at hand, the costs it will require, a team to work with, a timeline it will take and more.
Falkiner’s previous student did this and was promoted to marketing director for a rental car company.
Rock of ages
It’s one of the most popular courses at IPFW, its instructor says. Students tell one another about it, and then, when it’s more involved than they expected, they’re glad.
Social History of Rock and Roll looks at rock ’n’ roll from 1950 through 1980 and how America’s growth helped shaped the genre’s development, says John Minton, an anthropology professor who created the course 10 years ago.
As American society made the change from being a small, agricultural-based community to an urban one, music, too, has changed, Minton says.
“(Music is) a barometer of American society,” he says. “You can see how America made the transition from a folk society to the modern, urban world where ‘American Idol’ is the No. 1 show. We want to all be pop stars now.”
The course is considered general education, in the folklore program in the English department. Casses fill up quickly – he’s teaching two this semester, and both are full at 40 students – even though the curriculum isn’t what many students expect; it’s not a course on big stars and celebrities.
“It’s not a scandal-sheet approach to rock ’n’ roll,” Minton says. “(Students are) kind of surprised by that, but they seem to actually like that it’s a little deeper than what they’re expecting.”
